This study investigates the impacts of road traffic conditions and driver’s characteristics on the takeover time in automated vehicles using a driving simulator. Automated vehicles are barely expected to maintain their fully automated driving capability at all times based on the current technologies, and the automated vehicle system transfers the vehicle control to a driver when the system can no longer be automatically operated. The takeover time is the duration from when the driver requested the vehicle control transition from the automated vehicle system to when the driver takes full control of the vehicle. This study assumes that the takeover time can vary according to the driver’s characteristics and the road traffic conditions; the assessment is undertaken with various participants having different characteristics in various traffic volume conditions and road geometry conditions. To this end, 25 km of the northbound road section between Osan Interchange and Dongtan Junction on Gyeongbu Expressway in Korea is modeled in the driving simulator; the experiment participants are asked to drive the vehicle and take a response following a certain triggering event in the virtual driving environment. The results showed that the level of service and road curvature do not affect the takeover time itself, but they significantly affect the stabilization time, that is, a duration for a driver to become stable and recover to a normal state. Furthermore, age affected the takeover time, indicating that aged drivers are likely to slowly respond to a certain takeover situation, compared to the younger drivers. With these findings, this study emphasizes the importance of having effective countermeasures and driver interface to monitor drivers in the automated vehicle system; therefore, an early and effective alarm system to alert drivers for the vehicle takeover can secure enough time for stable recovery to manual driving and ultimately to achieve safety during the takeover.

中文翻译：

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使用驾驶模拟器调查道路交通状况和驾驶员特征对自动车辆接管时间和质量的影响

本研究使用驾驶模拟器调查道路交通状况和驾驶员特征对自动驾驶汽车接管时间的影响。基于目前的技术，几乎不希望自动驾驶汽车始终保持其全自动驾驶能力，并且当系统无法再自动操作时，自动驾驶汽车系统会将车辆控制权转移给驾驶员。接管时间是从驾驶员请求车辆控制从自动车辆系统转换到驾驶员完全控制车辆的持续时间。本研究假设接管时间可以根据驾驶员的特征和道路交通状况而有所不同；评估是由在各种交通量条件和道路几何条件下具有不同特征的各种参与者进行的。为此，在驾驶模拟器中模拟了韩国京釜高速公路乌山交流道和东滩路口之间25公里的北行路段；实验参与者被要求驾驶车辆并在虚拟驾驶环境中的某个触发事件后做出反应。结果表明，服务水平和道路曲率不影响接管时间本身，但显着影响稳定时间，即驾驶员稳定并恢复到正常状态的持续时间。此外，年龄影响接管时间，表明老年司机可能对某种接管情况反应缓慢，与年轻的司机相比。有了这些发现，本研究强调了在自动驾驶汽车系统中采用有效的对策和驾驶员界面来监控驾驶员的重要性；因此，早期有效的警报系统提醒驾驶员车辆接管，可以确保有足够的时间稳定地恢复到手动驾驶，并最终实现接管过程中的安全。